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Net of Stars
The Net of Stars is large and popular (and hence, crowded and noisy at all hours) tavern. It's known around the Reach for its friendly safety, its clean, cheerful, well-lit ambiance, and for the source of its illumination: huge glass three-quarter-globes (spheres with the uppermost quarter missing, so they're open at the top) that diffuse the light of oil lamps hung at their hearts, and that are gathered together overhead in a vast network of ceiling-nets -- obviously, the source of the establishment's name. The Net of Stars occupies a corner location three blocks from the docks, on the northeast side of the moot of Marampur and Steth Streets, in the Oldcoin neighbourhood of the city. Steth Street is the short, curving lane that arcs northwest from the Fountain of the Mermaid, and is only a block long; Marampur Street is the longer north-south route Steth Street ends in. Murak Sandorn, a former hiresword (warrior) of note who looks like a large, amiable bear with long, always-tangled honey-brown hair, is the owner and tavernmaster of the Net of Stars. He runs a large staff of young, eager men and women who know their drinks and how to serve them swiftly and deftly, grin when groped, and whistle for swift aid if something more serious occurs. Murak's known to have reached an agreement with the Grayclaws: the Net of Stars is 'safe ground' for both the Grayclaws and those they see as potential victims (they won't operate inside the place, except to conduct business discussions over drinks, but DO size up other drinkers, for pounce-thefts later). Murak's on-duty staff never numbers less than a dozen, and he prides himself on training them to be good-natured, sexy and flirtatious without being wanton or ever going farther (though arranging moots elsewhere with patrons for steamier matters is allowed), and alert to trouble or a possible thirsty throat. If a patron holds up one hand overhead cupped around empty air in a 'drink please' signal, a staffer should be at the table asking the patron's pleasure in three breaths or less. Murak allows all manner of meetings and negotiations to take place in the Net, but patrons are forbidden to bring live animals inside, or any food that's still alive, is hot, or has sauce on it or with it. Patrons are also forbidden to exchange items, with two exceptions: coins and other currency, and paper documents (in other words, a payment can be made or a contract drafted or signed, but merchants can't directly buy or sell goods). Murak does this to keep merchants from treating his tables like permanent business offices, not because he's an 'ogresnout' (nasty authority-hurler). He gives members of the Watch free drinks, and in return gets himself not only exemplary response from the Watch whenever brawls erupt, but at least a handful of off-duty Watch members in his taproom at all times. They understand that they're expected not to scrutinize or eavesdrop on fellow patrons in an obvious manner, and are treated like family. As a result, the Net is the safest tavern for miles. It never closes, and serves inexpensive drinks, nuts, handwheels of cheese, small roundloaves of salty bread, and "everything in" (usually boar-scraps and barley, thickened with mashed yellow peas, always salty, and always served in tankards, with long spoons handed out when the tankard grows low) soups. Murak and a lot of his staff live above the taproom, in a communal, everchanging family (Murak himself is best described as a "lazily tomcatting batchelor"), and has one 'sick room' suite up in the attic, but normally rents out no rooms, and permits no guests to stay overnight (he has been known to 'take in' a hunted guest as part of his family for a night). The cellars of the Net of Stars are often flooded knee-deep by stinking harbor-water, and are haunted by the ghosts of drowned smugglers, but that doesn't deter Murak from hiding some of the wealth he won during his mercenary days in hidden cellar chambers, or chasing his prettier serving-wenches down one of the two secret stairs (crowded with cobwebs and smuggler-chains) that link attic and cellars. The ghosts don't enter the secret stairs or the hidden rooms they lead to, but keep to the surrounding ring of chambers (which aren't directly connected to the hidden rooms). These surrounding chambers are usually choked with mold, rotting barrels, and a few inches of water, are reached down several stairs from the jakes (which empty into high-sided 'nightsoil' carts run down wheel-trough ramps to sit under the privies on chains, and hauled up and away by mules VERY early every morning, when replacements are brought) and from locked doors around the taproom. Murak hollowed out space under the 'backbar' room to serve as a wine-cellar, and abandoned the cellars to the ghosts, who attack all intruders. There is one trapdoor into the cellars that Murak can open precipitously by pulling a lever behind the bar, dumping undesirables in the taproom twenty feet down into the damp darkness. Only very small persons can be sent down into the nightsoil carts through the privy-holes, and the ghosts don't bother anyone in the ramp area, thanks to the presence of a crypt thing. The crypt thing, once the priestess Hurlara Snowstill, died fighting in the ramp to prevent smugglers from plundering a shrine to Tempus that once stood on the site of the Net of Stars, and was set here as a guardian. She prevents all living things, from rats to adventurers, from using the ramp as a way between the cellars and the street outside -- and more than one drunken sailor, urinating down the ramp, has been "hair-standing startled" at the sight of a red-eyed skeleton walking slowly and gracefully up the ramp towards him, clad only in the tattered ruins of a gown. The ghosts avoid her and the areas she guards, and Murak knows all about her and brings her new gowns (down the ramp, in the brief time between one nightsoil cart being removed and its replacement introduced) from time to time. A small flagstone in a passage near the privies can be lifted and set aside to allow things to be dropped down to her, and Murak sends her reading material in this way whenever he can. Hurlara carefully keeps and re-reads everything sent to her, and can sometimes be eerily heard entertaining herself by softly reading random words aloud from several sources, to stitch together a new (and inevitably rather stilted) tale. Category:Locations in Tantras Category:Taverns